GA-P35T-DQ6 SATA and VISTA

sslaatsv · Dec 9, 2007, 12:43 PM

I have "met the wall" building a new PC. VISTA does not see my disk during installation.

Motherboard: GA-P35T-DQ6 ver 1.0
OS: Windows Vista Ultimate
Disk: WD Caviar® GP 1 TB, SATA 3 Gb/s

BIOS sees the disk but i does not appear during the installation of VISTA.
Vista asks for drivers which i have supplied on a memory stick. (Drivers from the CD following the motherboard). VISTA reads the drivers but still it does not recognize the disk. Has anyone completed a similar working configuration ? Is Vista maybe the wrong choice - XP ?

Dyre Straits · Dec 9, 2007, 12:46 PM

As this is a Vista-specific issue, I'll move this to the correct forum. I do believe someone addressed this issue not long ago.

cozumel · Dec 9, 2007, 08:29 PM

I know you've said the BIOS sees the drive but have you enabled the relevant SATA controller?

Oh yeah....and welcome to DH

Judas · Dec 10, 2007, 02:15 AM

Make sure you are connected to the ICH9 chipset and not the extra one (if it has the gigabyte/jmicron controller as well)

also make sure you either have IDE mode selected (disables sata specific features) or ACHI (pure sata mode), obviously with one hardrive, you don't need or want RAID mode either.

Go to intels website and download the latest FLOPPY drive for your version of vista and you'll first have to extract the files to a floppy then copy the files from the floppy to a usb stick.

Next, makeing sure you have ALL USB or other storage controller type devices completely unplugged from the system, load up windows vista installation.. and then get to the load driver.... then plug the usb drive in..... you'll then have to hit cancel, wait a second.. and then hit load driver again..... (this forces a refresh of the system information again)..... load the driver, you should then be greeted with a hardrive.

if not..

Try IDE mode and see if the issue continues to occur..

lastly, make sure you have the boot priority setup right.....

sslaatsv · Dec 11, 2007, 06:01 PM

Answer
Thanks for a inspiring answer. I understand more. Still though i end up with the same result.
To be sure about the details. (I am not sure this is correct understood)
BIOS - relevant settings based on ACHI (pure SATA mode and Intel Chipset)
SATA RAID/AHCI Mode [AHCI]
SATA Port0-3 Native Mode [Enabled] (I use the SATAII port 0, INTEL)
xxxx
Onboard SATA/IDE Device [Enabled]
Onboard SATA/IDE Ctrl Mode [IDE]

Boot Priority
First [CDROM]CD
Second [Hard Disk]
Third [Disabled]
On strange thing. When i look at the Hard Disk Boot Priority the first line says SCSI ??
1. SCSI-0 : P0-WDC WD10EACS-00ZJBO

Booting VISTA
Select the driver to be installed.
I browse to E:\iaahci.inf (11.09.2007) Copied from the floppy Intel Storage Manager
The installation first seems to be ok
I'm not sure what you mean by saying Cancel. I guess I dont need to cancel the istall process - just ESC ?
" then plug the usb drive in..... you'll then have to hit cancel, wait a second.. and then hit load driver again..... (this forces a refresh of the system information again)..... load the driver, you should then be greeted with a hardrive."
Same what I do - No drives found.. Click Load Driver to provide a mass storage driver for installation.
sigh...

Judas · Dec 11, 2007, 07:16 PM

when running AHCI mode, it'll be a considered a scsi device in the bios... (it's just the way they've built it.. don't ask my why they haven't made it just say sata)

Have you tried running in IDE mode on that controller.. that's my fallback suggesiton

PangingJr · Dec 17, 2007, 05:50 AM

so how's it going?

OutOfRange · Dec 28, 2007, 07:26 PM

I experience such a problem like this also with my GA-P35-DS4 and WIndows XP, but this was an issue with Gigabyte's driver disc, it contained the wrong driver for the ICH9

What's a bit weird: Windows Vista comes with support for ICH9/ICH9R due to the fact that I don't needed an additional driver when installed Vista (x64 Home Premium) on my ICH9R based RAID5

(probably there's support for RAID and none for AHCI). So I think it possibly is (or was) a configuration problem in the BIOS.
Just to ask (if it is still not running): After the BIOS Post from the board itselfs, there's also a post and listing from the Intel AHCI BIOS, are the drives listed there correctly ?